What a Life!

Sorry for the absence. We’ve been swept up in the flurry of getting the house ready to put on the market. I’ve spent my limited “fun time” doing things like going to the park with the boys – must enjoy the nice spring weather – rather than blogging and such. [More park pictures here.]

As for how things are going with the house…

Typically with real estate transactions, you have a realtor come out, give you an idea of what price you should ask, and then you list it. It sells (sooner if it was listed at the right price, later if you have to reduce your price a couple times), and then you suffer through the stress of whether or not it will appraise for what you sold it for, whether or not the home inspector the buyer hires finds anything major to be fixed, and the almighty termite inspection. Been there, done that. [This is not the first home we have sold.]

In addition to staging the house by updating the paint and cleaning things up, we’ve had it appraised and inspected (both whole house and termite) before we list it. That way we will list it at the right price and target the right audience immediately while the listing is fresh. Then it will be more sellable because the buyers know in advance what condition the house is in (they can review the report when they see the house). We won’t have to worry about the condition or value of the home – it’s just a matter of the buyer finalizing the financing. A seamless transaction.

We’ve taken good care of the house, addressing issues as they arose, and doing things here and there to make it nicer. The home inspector only found seven minor issues for us to address (mostly related to building code changes). There are no termites (the thorn in our flesh when we sold our last house). We thought the house should be worth around $115K and it appraised for $116K. Things are looking pretty good, and we know it’s not just our imagination…

There are a few projects to finish up this weekend, including cutting holes in the utility room door or wall. That would be the big thorn in our flesh this go-round. If you’ve ever bought or sold a house, you know there is always one stupid thing that comes up that is totally ridiculous and a complete waste of time and money, but alas! you have no choice.

When we sold our last house, there were no termites, but this fly-by-night company the buyers hired “found” some and then gave us a low-ball price to treat that no one else even came close to. It just looked crooked, and I was determined that they weren’t going to be the ones who would treat because a) they’d be getting a $600 reward for their bad behavior, and b) they would probably treat with water or something since everyone else wanted at least $1000 to treat our house. We did finally get a reputable company (the guy our realtor always referred her clients to) to match the other company’s price and treat it for us. We wanted to have that company inspect our house for this transaction – I remember people who treat me right – but I couldn’t find it in the yellow pages. The home inspector told us the guy that owned it had fallen from scaffolding and died, leaving a wife and young kids behind. Such a shame!

This time it’s cutting holes in the utility room wall or door. Something to do with backdrafting. The dryer sucks air out and the water heater and furnace keep burning the same stale air and end up pumping carbon monoxide into the house – killing everyone, of course.

Okay, we’ve had a carbon monoxide detector in that room (with fresh batteries every six months) for years and it has never gone off. Furthermore, while the rest of the basement is finished, that room is only semi-finished. The ceiling is actually the floorboards of the main level, and if you stand on a stool, you can look around see between the basement ceiling and floorboards above in the rest of the basement. There is a window in there as well.

I’ve seen furnaces in closets before with louvered doors and you can definitely tell when you open and close the door that there is an air-flow issue, even with the louvered door. I have never noticed any suction issue when I’ve opened or closed that door to the utility room. I like having it closed because I don’t like hearing the dryer and the furnace running if I don’t have to, and the last thing I want is two ugly vents installed in the door. All things considered, I think there are a lot of unidentified air sources that are providing sufficient ventilation for that room, especially considering that one of the allowed solutions is to have a two-inch space between the bottom of the door and the floor, which means it doesn’t take much.

I went to Lowes in search of vents to use, but they don’t really sell vents to be placed in doors. They could custom make some to match our door for a tune of $100 each…and we would need one for each side at the bottom and one for each side at the top…to a tune of $400. A louvered door could be special-ordered for $399. I mean, if it was a real problem that lots of houses have, they would have things you could use to fix the problem in stock for a reasonable price. At least you would think…

I talked to the local HVAC company to verify what the code really is and what exactly we needed to do to comply. He said they go through this every time they install a new furnace in someone’s utility room, and yes, its a heartbreaker to cut holes in the walls of some of these old, beautiful homes with vintage solid wood doors and such. Apparently, it’s a code that has gone into effect since we bought this house, and it applies to every house that gets a new furnace or goes through a real estate transaction.

He used the actual ratings of our furnace and water heater and sold us vents that are appropriately sized for our utility room for a reasonable price. I want to put them in the wall rather than the door, because I think two 12×14 vents in the door would look really tacky, but it’s going to take a lot more work and fiddling around to do it that way. We also have to borrow or acquire some kind of saw to cut the holes. Fun. As my husband will tell you, though, never underestimate the Little Red Hen. It will be done, it will be done right, and it will not be an eyesore.

So really, if those are the biggest problems we have, we’re doing quite well. Or at least that’s what I keep telling myself. We should be finishing up our projects this weekend. Next week I will do the final staging (decluttering, tidying, hanging new curtains and such). Then I will rent a wide-angle lens and a bounce flash and take pictures of the house – I am looking forward to that.

As for our plans, we’re still working out the details. We’ve looked at the market enough to know that there are houses out there that meet our criteria. But we are not going out and actually looking at anything until this one sells. I don’t want to fall in love with a new house and then go crazy waiting for this one to sell so we can buy that one and make rash decisions we will regret later. This has been a wonderful house, we have loved living here, and the amount of space has worked very well for us. If we are going to expand our family once more, though, we need another bedroom, and I’d rather make that move now than when I’m pregnant (though we’ve been told the original owners of this house raised five children in it without a finished basement).

So that is how things are at our house. I have a whole list of blog fodder completely unrelated to house stuff, but it will have to wait. I have a long list of things to do.

Onward!